Victorian Scrapbook

Today the hobby
of scrapbooking has become a multi-billion dollar industry with
specialized magazines, conventions and a large number of companies
creating products solely for the activity. The hobby has even
surpassed golf in popularity: one in four households has someone
playing golf while one in three households has someone engaged in
scrapbooking. A
modern day scrapbook is a combination of a photo album, diary,
journal and a keepsake.

Image:
ADVERTISING TRADE CARDS: Brightly colored
trade cards were printed to promote stores or products;
often they were intentionally made funny, or attractive to
encourage people to keep them.

The
popularity of scrapbooking is not a new phenomenon; “keeping a
scrap-book” was a popular 19th century pastime,
especially for women and children. The Oxford English Dictionary,
which defines a scrap-book as a “blank book in which
pictures, newspaper cuttings, and the like are pasted for
preservation," suggests that 1854 is the earliest known date of
the word "scrap-book" being used in print although other methods of
collecting mementos were popular since the 18th century.

Disposable paper items such as trade cards, die-cuts and greeting
cards were collected by both children and adults and pasted into
Victorian scrapbooks. These decorative albums were composed of
"scraps," collectible cards, and trade cards, which were

sometimes
arranged quite artistically on a page. Sheet of
scraps with stamped embossed reliefs, chromos or die cuts of
small paper images could be purchased for the making of
scrapbooks.

Some 19th century scrapbooking albums were made with
elaborately tooled leather covers, engraved clasps and brass
locks. Scrapbooks were indispensable as a method of illustration in
teaching children both at home and in the Sunday-school. Women’s
magazines from the 1800s often describe the making of a scrap-book
as an essential “rainy-day occupation” for children and include a
list of scrapbooking supplies to be kept on hand for such a day.

REWARD OF MERIT: These cards were
awarded to students in schools and Sunday schools for
punctual attendance, good conduct and improvement at school;
they often found their way into scrapbooks to be viewed at
family gatherings.

A nineteenth century school-girl scrapbook often displayed
portraits of her favorite authors, with little sketches of their
lives and quotations from their works. As the student’s literary
taste changed as the years went by and she cared for other authors,
the old scrapbooks were interesting as milestones to indicate her
progress.

For adults,
nineteenth century scrapbooks were created for a variety of reasons:
as a craft project, as a way to preserve letters or photos, and as a
way to document a family history or special event. For whatever
purpose the scrapbooks were first fashioned, today they offer a
glimpse of the

lifestyles and cultural trends of the day through
their use of newspapers, calendars, leaflets, advertising trade
cards, greeting cards, calling cards and more. The very methodical
person in the 1800s arranged their scrapbooks under separate categories, or even
had a small library of scrap-books devoted to various
departments — historic, scientific, or sociological.

CALLING CARDS: Also called "visiting
cards," they were exchanged on social occasions and
imprinted with a man's or woman's name; they were often
saved as a measure of one's popularity.

For the ordinary
Victorian housewife, a scrapbook was not always so ambitious; it
was often just a labyrinth of memories puzzling to everyone except
its owner. Nevertheless, with an expenditure of a few moments’
time, adults were able to preserve odd and curious bits of
information, poems which had brought them comfort or strength,
stories, artistic sketches, and other memories; which without the
scrap-book would have been lost. For the historian, these
collections of ephemeral bits of printed paper are invaluable as window into
the social history of the 19th century.

GREETING CARDS: Holiday cards, such as this
Christmas greeting card, were typically printed on stiff paper or cardboard.